Re: Passwd problem

N. Thompson wrote:

> I recently upgraded my installation of dockyard-devel cleanly by
> reinstalling rather than using apt-get and I have found that a lot of it
> works much better however there are a few issues I am unable to resolve on
> my own.
> 
> Most importantly I am unable to change passwords using passwd, I have
> brought this up in the irc channel at one point but nobody there could
> help me fix it. The output I get whether running it as root or as a user
> is almost identical:
> 
> [arklinux@localhost ~]$ passwd
> Changing password for user arklinux.
> Changing password for arklinux
> (current) UNIX password:
> passwd: Module is unknown
> 
> running it through gdb doesn't give me any more information:
> 
> [root@localhost ~]# gdb passwd
> GNU gdb Ark Linux (5.3-1ark)
> Copyright 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you
> are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain
> conditions. Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
> There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for
> details. This GDB was configured as "i386-ark-linux"...(no debugging
> symbols found)... (gdb) run
> Starting program: /usr/bin/passwd
> Changing password for user root.
> passwd: Module is unknown
> 
> Program exited with code 01.
> (gdb) backtrace
> No stack.
> (gdb)
> 
> I have used apt-get to (re)install all of the following packages without
> any success in resolving this problem:
> - cracklib
> - expect
> - pam
> - passwd
> - pwdb
> - setup
> - shadow
> 
> 
> The other problem I was going to mention is with device icons on the
> desktop, I have configured KDE not to show them but somehow they keep
> popping up anyway and when they do they push icons out of place. This is
> most likely in part because I have my desktop icons set up to line up
> automatically however I much preffer to have a folder pointing to
> devices:/ than having the icons on the desktop. I am also unable to eject
> CDs with either the button on the front of the drive or with the eject
> command unless I run eject as root.
> 
> Finally I am finding myself unable to start Xorg in safe mode, this is
> probably because of the absense of xterm but apt-get seems unable to find
> xterm, if this is the result of switching the save mode over to something
> like konsole then I can wait however if no one intends on fixing this then
> I will probably build my own xterm rpm.
> 
> PS. If no one is able to discover the problem with passwd with the
> information given then bero, zdeems or rei_0000 can ssh over to my
> computer if they want to collect more information, I am not however aware
> of what the root password is except that its the one that was on there
> from the point of installation.
> 
> Some time next week a friend of ours will be comming over to look at Linux
> on our computers in order to determine whether he wants to use it, I'm
> glad Ark Linux is working so well now and its going to be one of the
> distributions I'll be showing him.

There is no password. The root and arklinux accounts are automatically
configured with disabled passwords. This prevents you from having remote
logins on these accounts, this is specifically done to increase remote
security. The problem you are having is some how related to the kernel,
pam, or kdesu. As you will notice you switch to a console i.e. ctrl+alt+f2
you can login with arklinux no password and su with no password. This is an
exsisting problem that I have noted and bero seems unable to reproduce so
he hasn't fixed it. However if you also have this issue then the problem is
not simply a matter of an isolated incident, its more a matter of breaking
his computer so that he will have to look at it. As for passwd, I suspect
its linked to a problem with crypto which has also been broken for quite a
long while in the kernel, which adversly effect several programs including
gpg.

-- 
ArkLinux - Definition: Choice 
http://www.arklinux.org 
IRC channel - #arklinux

Luke Anthony Hebert